Wednesday, March 19, 2014

One side-effect of getting a Master's Degree in
international affairs with a specific focus on Russia and the former Soviet
Union is whenever something important happens in that part of the world, your
friends all ask for your views on the event.This has been happening recently with the ongoing situation in
Ukraine.Questions about the sanity of
Vladimir Putin have been coming up a lot lately, along with the definitive
statement that “Putin IS crazy” over his (and by extension Russia's) actions
with Crimea.

But the thing is, Putin's not crazy. In fact, he's
far from it.He may be cold, calculating
and cunning, but crazy?No.But he is very much playing by a different
set of rules than the global community and is being driven by a different set
of impulses.One quote that has been
brought up quite often in the commentary about the Ukraine is Putin's statement
that the breakup of the Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical mistake of
the 20th century”.His
seizure of the Crimean then is an attempt to rebuild the old Soviet Union,
right?Not exactly.Rather Putin's Crimea gambit is not so much
an attempt to restore the glory of the Soviet Union as it is trying to ensure that
Ukraine continues to falter.

To better understand what's going on today, we need to take
a very quick look at Putin and both Russia and Ukraine following the end of the
Soviet Union in 1991.Quite simply,
Russia in the 1990s was a mess: a country rocked by economic turmoil, with a
crumbling infrastructure and inept leadership in the form of the old, ailing
and occasionally drunk Boris Yeltsin.When Putin took over from Yeltsin in 1999, he had the unenviable task of
rebuilding both the country and in reestablishing the role of government in the
country.Putin tackled this problem in
two ways: the first was personal.The
images of Putin bare-chested in Siberian rivers, flying in fighter jets,
throwing opponents on the judo mat, diving in submarines, and occasionally
hugging a fuzzy puppy, have become a staple of late night comedy shows in the
US.But rather than expressions of odd
personal vanity, these are carefully crafted images meant to portray Putin as a
muzhik, a Russian term for a “real man” - a strong and virile leader, a
counterpoise to the tottering Yeltsin.

Putin's second method was to strike a deal with the
oligarchs – the class of businessmen who became fabulously wealthy and powerful
in the chaos of the 1990s.Putin agreed
to let them have their business empires, so long as they didn't challenge his
political authority.The one oligarch
who was seen as breaking this covenant – Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the
oil conglomerate Yukos and once Russia's richest man – was quickly jailed on
dubious charges, his assets seized.The
rest of the oligarchs either fell in line or left the country; their media
empires reinforced the image of Putin as a strong leader.Of course Russia's citizens knew this was
going on.But under Putin the ruble
stabilized, consumer goods became more available and affordable, life, for most,
became more comfortable, so, for the most part, Russia's citizens went along
with the deal.

Ukraine experienced a similar economic chaos after the end
of the Soviet Union.But for Ukraine,
things didn't get better, the economy continued to falter, a small elite took
advantage of corrupt leadership to become wildly wealthy.In 2004 the people had enough; the mass
public protests that came to be known as the Orange Revolution swept aside the
existing government.But the new
government formed by the Orange Revolution's leaders Viktor Yushenko and Yulia
Tymoshenko was consumed by infighting between their two rival factions.The economy continued to falter, so much so
that Ukrainians would eventually reelect President Viktor Yanukovich, the very
man the Orange Revolution drove from power.Yanukovich continued to rip off the state, while cozying up to to Putin
and moving Ukraine closer to Moscow, which sparked off another round of public
protests, the EuroMaidan, that again drove him from power.

Putin's fear now is that this time the new leaders of
Ukraine might get it right – that they could set Ukraine on the path to
development and prosperity.It is not an
idle fear.While things are much better
in Russia today than they were in the 1990s, the country still lags far behind
most other European countries.The
average monthly salary in Russia is just $500 a month, far lower than in much
of Europe, especially western Europe.Again,
Russians are aware of the disparity, many Russians have friends or family who
live in the “West” (the United States, Great Britain, Canada, etc.), so they
know that other countries have higher standards of living, less corruption,
better infrastructure, and so on.But
these positives are balanced out by statements of the problems with these
foreign societies: the Americans are too driven by careers; the British are too
fussy.When those stereotypes fail, the
fall-back argument is while these societies may work fine for their native ethnicities,
they would never work in Russia because they fail to understand the
ever-mysterious “Russian Soul” (which contrary to Russian belief isn't all that
mysterious); Russia as a nation may have its short-comings, but the society has
“soul”.

But this argument would hall apart should Ukraine follow a
path like Poland and transition to becoming an open and prosperous (relative to
their position at the end of the Cold War) society.Another frequently made point over these past
few weeks is how the Russian and Ukrainian people are “brothers”.The Russian identity started not in Moscow,
but near Kiev, 1,000 years ago; Kiev, and Ukraine, still hold a mythic place in
the Russian imagination.Ukraine already
has a much more open press and has staged far freer elections in recent years
than Russia.If this were paired with
economic growth, should Ukraine's per capita income surpass that of Russia,
then the theoretical underpinning of Putinism – that Russia is such a complex
society it needs a “strong” leader – would be swept aside.This is what keeps Putin awake at night, the
thought that Ukraine might succeed in a way that Russia has not and that the
Russian people would take notice.This
is why Putin is determined to undermine the provisional government in Kiev and
the one that will take office following the scheduled May elections.Ukraine cannot be given the chance to develop
outside his shadow and in a way that may surpass his creation.

The situation in Ukraine will remain highly volatile.While it is unlikely that Putin wants a war,
he does benefit from the perception that a war could happen and the
instability that brings to Ukraine.Putin does not believe that the West, particularly the United States,
will take any meaningful action to stop him, in large part because Russia faced
no serious repercussions following their conflict with Georgia in 2008 and
because Europe is dependent on energy supplies, particularly natural gas, from
Russia.This is a recipe though for
miscalculation.The longer that armed
and angry men are kept faced off with each other, the chance for an accident
that sparks off a conflict grows.And if
Ukraine is invaded or otherwise drawn into a conflict, the US and European
Union will be compelledto act in reply,
whether they want to or not.

So while Putin is not crazy, he is currently smug, arrogant
and over-confident in the strength of his position, which is almost just as
bad.

Mission Statement

Why A World View? Because I was frustrated by the lack of international news coverage in the American press. Sadly, foreign events usually only make the news when there’s a war or natural disaster someplace. But the world is more interconnected than ever, what happens on the other side of the globe can have a direct affect on your life. So I started this site to cover some of these stories missed by the mainstream media, and to provide analysis and context to others. And my goal is to do it in a way that you don’t feel like you need a PhD degree to understand what’s going on.